Mac Users Invade part 2

Several of you commented about wanting to know how our "bridging the gap" meeting went.  I decided to let our uber mac volunteer Brian run the meeting while I was working on other projects ... I figured dialogue might be more open if it was strictly mac users only :-)

Ed and I did get pulled into the meeting later once they were actually working to resolve issues.

Brian left a comment on my prior post which I'm going to post here in case you missed it:
Brian says...

Regarding the top 10 list, there were two consistent themes, email and printing.

Here's the list that we came up with:
1. Integration with Exchange
2. Printing
3. Mounted drives locking up Finder

We never got to point 4.

There are a few options for integration with Exchange and each option provides varying degrees of success.
1. Microsoft Entourage
2. Integrate Mail.app with Exchange
3. Outlook Web Access
4. Use Evolution
5. Replace Exchange with an open solution

I've never liked Entourage much, I found the interface cluttered and cumbersome. Moreover, it tends to be problematic because it depends upon option 3 to function properly. Changes to OWA have a tendency to break Entourage.

Mail.app seems to work well, however, it doesn't hide non-mail IMAP folders, causing questions such as "Why doesn't my Calendar work in Mail?". In order to create a Exchange account, the exchange server needs to accept IMAP requests.

I'm reviewing Evolution as a possible Exchange client for our next IT meeting.

Printing issues are due primarily to two factors, incorrect configuration or lack of driver support. Resolving these issues is usually possible since OS X uses the same printing engine that Linux uses. This fact enables OS X to use most of the printer drivers that are available on Linux machines. Visit http://linuxprinting.org for a complete list of drivers.

Older PCL based printers tend to be more problematic. In Panther, OS X was able to utilize PCL printer drivers, but this appears to have changed in Tiger. I need to do more research on that. Perhaps the extensive support for PDF output necesitated dropping rasterized drivers such as PCL. More research is needed. In the meantime, I will be setting up a Linux print server and making it's printers available to OS X clients via CUPS broadcasting.

So to summarize everything, we've got some work to do in order to complete the invasion. Till then, keep smiling and be patient. I'll do my best to resolve all of our issues.
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For those interested here's a PDF doc from apple on Active Directory integration with OSX.

Download Leveraging_AD_on_MOSXS_1.1.pdf

I watched Brian add the macs into AD ... it wasn't too complicated although I'd need some screenshots to rememeber how to do it again.

David Drinnon of Second Baptist says they use this product with great results to manage their macs via Active Directory http://www.thursby.com/products/admitmac.html

By nights end it seemed like everyone was feeling very positive about the experience and some pain points were reduced.  From here out it'll be mainly one-on-one interactions with Brian to tweak on each persons individual needs.

Brian has also contacted some regional Apple dude and is setting up a meeting for him to come to GCC, see what our mac guys are doing, and hopefully figure out ways to support our guys better.

We still don't support Macs and I doubt ever will ... but thanks to volunteers like Brian we're doing what we can to help "bridge the gap".

Hugs and kisses to all my mac homies!

PS ... please don't leave stupid comments about how you think PC's suck, macs are superior and we should just switch to all macs.  You obviously are clueless about IT and your comment will be deleted.  :-)

Comments

[Brett Anderson]

You said "Changes to OWA have a tendency to break Entourage."
I recently deployed OWA, but later changed the port number & added a certificate for secure access over the internet. Since those changes I haven't been able to connect Entourage to Exchange. Extremely frustrating!

[Brian Marquis]

See http://www.microsoft.com/mac/resources/resources.aspx?pid=resourcekits&rk=officex&article=/mac/officex/ork/Configure_Entourage.xml for help setting up Entourage to use non-standard ports.

[Craig B.]

Yep, went down the apple/ms integration path a few years back.

Mostly a painful experience (yes, we bought into the Thursby admitmac product for awhile...got it working sort of). Fortunately, we got most workgroups to move to ms world.

For the remaining apple outfit, I just dropped a terminal services client on their machines which connected to a full blown Windows desktop.

they want all the features of outlook 2003?
term serv

they want the full office suite and other windows apps?
term serv

Cut our support calls dramatically.

For the record, I think macs, *nix, windows, BEOS etc.etc. are all more or less great. Integration however = throbbing headaches. NOTE: This is not a segue for discussing open source.

[jeff Petersen]

As one of the "Rebel Mac Unit" at GCC i just want to say that for "Not supporting Macs" Jason and Ed have done a fabulous job getting us through the pains that have unfortunately been involved at times as changes are made on our current system. Brian's willingness to come forward and their initiative to setup the MacUser meeting is just another sign of our awesome team that is trying to do ministry together not just do a job. We use the tools that we need to do what we do, and the guys understand that and could not be more gracious.

the meeting was very helpful to many of us. i know that we found a number of issues on my computer alone-One "easy one" of note was a piece of software (Disk Inventory X) that Brian suggested to me that helped me find a 30GB cache file on my laptop that i thought must be somewhere??? that i could never find. How much is that worth??? Priceless : )
thanks team-it is a pleasure.
Jeff
GCC Media and Production Director

[Kevin Parker]

Evolution is also dependent upon OWA if I remember correctly. You may want to check on that. That may have changed on the newer versions, but I believe the old versions functioned through OWA.

[Brian Glass]

Jason,

I've used Evolution before quite a bit (assuming it's Novell's Evolution) and I've had mixed results. I have never tried integrating it with Exchange, but I usually end up going back to Thunderbird because if Evolution's idiosynchrosies. But some people love it. I'll be interested to hear how that goes.

As for printing, you should be able to use IPP from the Mac to the Windows machines or directly to the printers (assuming they are network printers). In theory you can set up IPP printing from a Windows server running IIS. (see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/internetprint.mspx ).

I'm all for getting you guys to use Linux, but hey, if your expertise is in Windows, you may want to check this out. ;)

[Brian Marquis]

As far as printing goes, I setup a Linux print server with a PCL6 driver to an old Lanier 5222. Turned on Cups printer broadcasting for GCC's internal network. The printer is now available to OS X systems as a Shared printer.

While Windows also supports IPP printing, I've not had any experience using it, so opted for the Linux server, where I can get really creative if necessary. I wrote a customized content-aware printing system for Linux a few years back, so I know CUPS quite well.

[Brian Glass]

Very cool. I'll have to remember that for future reference. Next time I need solve some really arcane CUPS problem I'll know where to come. ;)